The history of America in the later part of the pioneer period, between 1810 and 1840, centers about the roads and canals which were to that day what our trunk railway lines are to us today. The "life of the road" was the life of the nation, and a study of the traffic on those first highways of land and water, and of the customs and experiences of the early travelers over them brings back with freshening interest the story of our own "Middle Age." Horace Bushnell well said: "If you wish to know whether society is stagnant, learning scholastic, religion a dead formality, you may learn something by going into universities and libraries; something also by the work that is doing on cathedrals and churches, or in them; but quite as much by looking at the roads. For if there is any motion in society, the Road, which is the symbol of motion, will indicate the fact. When there is activity, or enlargement, or a liberalizing spirit of any kind, then there is intercourse and travel, and these require roads. So if there is any kind of advancement going on, if new ideas are abroad and new hopes rising, then you will see it by the roads that are building. Nothing makes an inroad without making a road. All creative action, whether in government, industry, thought, or religion, creates roads." The days when our first roads and our great canals were building, were days when "new ideas were abroad and new hopes rising." The four volumes of our series treating of pioneer roads and the great canals will be a record of those ideas and hopes and the mighty part they played in the social development of America. The final volume will treat of the practical side of the road question. An index will conclude the series. HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA GENERAL INTRODUCTION GENERAL INTRODUCTION Nothing is more typical of a civilization than its roads. The traveler enters the city of Nazareth on a Roman road which has been used, perhaps, since the Christian era dawned. Every line is typical of Rome; every block of stone speaks of Roman power and Roman will. And ancient roads come down from the Roman standard in a descending scale even as the civilizations which built them. The main thoroughfare from the shore of the Yellow Sea to the capital of Korea, used by millions for millenniums, has never been more than the bridle path it is today--fit emblem of a people without a hope in the world, an apathetic, hermit nation. Every road has a story and the burden of every story is a need. The greater the need, the better the road and the longer and more important the story. Go back even to primeval America. The bear's food was all about him, in forest and bush. He made no roads for he needed none, save a path into the valley. But the moose and deer and buffalo required new feeding-grounds, fresh salt licks and change of climate, and the great roads they broke open across the watersheds declare nothing if not a need.